USDA sent a farm bill-required study to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees last week that says Country-of-Origin Labeling has no economic benefit to the meat industry.
House Ag Chair Mike Conaway says it is perplexing that USDA would ignore basic facts and put forward an approach that would only serve to exacerbate the current situation, according to Agri-Pulse.
That approach is a generic mandatory label option.
This approach doesn’t help producers or consumers and does nothing to mitigate the threat of retaliation since it has already been rejected by U.S. trading partners, according to Conaway.
He says it is apparent the department is void of a workable, trade-compliant solution and producers, consumers and targeted industries deserve a straight-forward response stating as much.
Despite the little economic benefit of COOL, National Farmers Union’s Roger Johnson says the consumer’s right to know where their food comes from is immeasurable.
